Topic: Octopath Traveler

Saw a trailer last night on FB. This game came out of left field for me. Didn't know anything about it, never heard about it, etc., then saw the trailer, and, well, I am now intrigued.

@JaxonH Great write up! I have to disagree that the combat feels like Xenoblade, though you did say "in a way."
I've only play to the "Thanks for playing" for Primrose so far, but dang. This game is gonna be great. It is flying waaaay under the radar for people. I LOVE rpgs, but I am way too picky when it comes to them (excluding pokemon... I don't know why though). The last rpg I played that I actually loved was Tales of Symphonia on gamecube. I hated Xenoblade for its battle system. I tried to push through it for the story, but it just wasn't good enough to counter balance the battle system. I really wanted to like that game though.

Octopath though, it has me hooked already. It can't come soon enough.

Any idea if we can transfer our demo save files to the full game?

I haven't played much of the demo but it feels like bravely (which make sense given the team behind it) so I'm already sold. I didn't like the artstyle when I first saw trailers for the game but it really pops in person. Looking forward to this.

Jumped the gun, didn't ya?

I played the first chapter of Primrose's path... and HOLY MOLY! I think I'm already in love. I will most certainly be keeping up with news of Octopath Traveler development. Color me both impressed with the demo and very excited for it's eventual full release! (now to play the other dude's path)

Coming from the Bravely Default guys, a demo that makes you sit through 15 minutes of plot setup (with Primrose, at least, haven't tried Olberic yet) before you get to fight anything is disappointing. Game's looking pretty good though. The battle system seems a bit simplified compared to Bravely, but that makes it not so overwhelming, so I'm fine with that. My main concern is, I hope there's enough variety in the random battles. You get healed after every fight, so if you're facing the same enemies repeatedly and don't even have to worry about attrition, it could get dull.

Do we know anything about the other heroes yet? C'mon, I wanna decide who I'm going to pick months in advance!

It most certainly does. The demo even features a few in the post-game (if you can call it that, essentially after the boss). For example, you find a person who is causing an uproar near a shopkeep and he's complaining about his actions, whereas a nearby villager says it all started when his sister Layla was presumed dead. You can find an amnesiac Layla not too far away whom you can "Allure" with Primrose the Dancer, take her to her problematic brother, and solve the crisis.
Another shows a nobleman harassing a young woman. You can challenge him to a duel with Olberric and knock him to free the woman from her problem. She mentions something about her name and then runs off.

Now, at least in the demo, solving these little side quest puzzles does pretty much nothing. There were no rewards for any that I completed so who knows what their purpose is.

@Zyrac And you most certainly do NOT get healed after every fight. I was exploring the desert with Primrose and was at 1 HP for several fights in a row. You only get healed after a level up.

@Zyrac Actually I'm pretty sure you get healed every time you level up, not every battle.

Edit: Welp, didn't realize I had this window opened that long XD

Just completed the Primrose side of the demo, and I have to say, I am INSANELY impressed so far. You can definitely tell this is from the Bravely people, what with the interesting twist on turn-based combat (although, unlike @JaxonH, I think BD unquestionably had a deeper and more interesting battle system), the sweeping music, and the twisted storyline (BD was full of shocking displays of human cruelty and evil, and this game is definitely continuing that "tradition").

The one area where this game EASILY tops BD is in the visual presentation. This game looks AMAZING. Seriously, the combination of pixel art with heavily-stylized CG is drop-dead gorgeous.

The battle system is decent. You can borrow BP from a constantly re-filling gauge to attack multiple times in a single turn (imagine BD if you could build up brave points without having to default, and with no risk of leaving yourself vulnerable). Enemies also have certain weaknesses, and if you hit their weaknesses a certain number of times, you can break their shields, and they're unable to act for a turn while they're regenerating their shields. Definitely better than traditional turn-based combat, but it needs a few more layers to be fully satisfying. Maybe with more complex mechanics to take advantage of it?

Combat is also pretty limited with only one party member. Hopefully we get full parties like in BD and classic FF games.

That lack of any kind of risk/return makes me not like it as much as BD's system. Although this one is certainly less confusing at first.

Still, really impressed with what I've played of it so far.

I actually like the fact you don't have to default to gain BP, and using BP to amplify attacks rather than simply attack multiple times just feels better to me.

I also really like the "Break" system with weapon weaknesses.

Pretty sure other party members will join. In the trailer for Primrose, it showed her summon a villager to help, but someone else was already present to make a total of 3 people I saw (pretty sure, anyways).

@Ralizah We may yet see those advantages come in. I mean it's only a demo, and one far ahead of the game at that.

Edit: You can, in fact, already form a party. The game informs you of this, and I have Primrose at 11 and Olberic at 15 right now. 15 being max in the demo.

Also the fact that the game deigns to mention that Olberic is a "Warrior" and Primrose a "Dancer" tells me there may just be a class-system involved here.

They showed Olberic, Primrose and a couple of unidentified others fighting together. There's no doubt you form a party.

I haven't played much of Bravely Default, but this one got me hooked.
I played Olbric's story, and I guess every character has an introduction/history of about 15 minutes before you can finally play. I really like the world design, characters and story so far. I also find the battle much much better, even though it's similar.

@Zyrac if you want Battle RPGs with forgettable storylines, there's plenty of that already out and coming for Switch: Pick one of at least 6 Musou/Warrior-style games or Dragonball Xenoverse 2 for instance. Story- and character-based RPGs are not for you, if you don't even have 15 minutes to let the game introduce you to its world, story and characters.

@SKTTR That's not the point. The point is that it isn't demo material. The Bravely Default demo gave you a brief introduction and sent you off to go do things with a full party and a few jobs unlocked. A demo that's just the first part of the full game is lazy and doesn't do its job as well as it could.

@JaxonH @UmniKnight Well, not to mention her spells mention buffing the attack power of an "ally," which would be pointless wording if there were never going to be parties. I guess what I mean is enduring parties that you grow attached to, not necessarily just other people joining you in battle once in a while. We'll see.

@Zyrac

For RPGs I prefer it the way it's done here. It allows you to start a new game that you can play up to a certain point and if you liked it until the end and want to continue you can buy the game. There is no better way. The Disgaea 5 Complete demo was just like this and I ended up buying the game.

You want to get straight to the action without knowing what's actually going on...
well, you must have liked the horrible Monster Hunter demos then.

Oh, and you forget the game isn't nearly done, maybe there's nothing else that was ready. This is not like other demos. It's an early hands-on!

@Ralizah Aye, well so far Primrose just joined without a word, but then it's a very early demo. I'm sure it'll all be nicely fleshed out in the actual game.

On the account of demo, I wonder what prompted them to release one so early. Gauging interest?

@UmniKnight I believe they said that they were going to survey people about the game in the direct. So the impression I got was that it's early enough in development that they can tweak some things if they need to.